Poets Laureate Reading

This event is FREE and ADA accessible.

Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and The Institute of American Indian Arts. Da’ is Eastern Shawnee. She is the current Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and Poet Planner for King County, Washington. Her first book, Tributaries, won the 2016 American Book Award. Her latest book, Instruments of the True Measure, won the Washington State Book Award.

Shin Yu Pai is the current Civic Poet of the City of Seattle. Her most recent books are Less Desolate (Blue Cactus Press) and No Neutral (Empty Bowl). She is a Poet Laureate fellow of the Academy of American Poets and has received awards for her work from Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture, Artist Trust, Common Counsel Foundation, and Cambridge Arts Council. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Shin Yu is the host and creator of Ten Thousand Things, a chart-topping podcast of Asian American stories produced by KUOW, Seattle’s NPR affiliate station.

Arianne True (Choctaw, Chickasaw) is a queer poet and teaching artist from Seattle, and has spent most of her work time working with youth. She’s received fellowships and residencies from Jack Straw, the Hugo House, Artist Trust, and the Seattle Repertory Theater, and is a proud alum of Hedgebrook and of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She lives near the Salish Sea with her cat. Arianne is the 2023-2025 Washington State Poet Laureate. She grew up in the Seattle writing community, nurtured by YouthSpeaks and the Richard Hugo House, and as an adult, has gotten to return and work with young writers in both spaces. She currently teaches with Writers in the Schools, mentors with the Seattle Youth Poet Laureate program and Hugo House’s Young Writers Cohort and is a guest lecturer at the University of Washington. Arianne was a 2020 Jack Straw Writer, a 2020-2021 Hugo House Fellow, and is a proud alum of Hedgebrook and of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. For Pride 2021, she was part of the Pride Poets Hotline, writing custom poems for strangers over the phone. She was the inaugural Native Artist-in-Residence at Seattle Repertory Theater (2021-22 season) and received the 2022 Vadon Foundation Fellowship for Native Artists from Artist Trust.